Mikaeru Kira's page

Hi!

After reading this book I fell in love with the radiant and began thinking about possible builds, but then I encountered a small issue:

According to p. 47 of Akashic Mysteries (first page of chapter 6: veilweaving) you can only shape veils occupying different chakras (without taking options like the Twin Veil feat).
From level 17 onward, the radiant can shape 7+ veils, but he gains only six kinds of chakra binds. Does this mean, you can't utilize the full potential of his base class feature (8 veils at level 20) without taking Twin Veil twice?

I mean, there ARE enough chakras available on the radiant's veil list to cover all 8 (which can be unlocked with the Access [...] Chakra Slot feat chain), but the issue still stands with not being able to utilize all veils to the fullest without feat taxes...

I must say, it was quite a shock to get online today and see this revision with 5 ranks per talent thing.
In my opinion, it is a nerf not needed (and likely won't appear in games gm'd by me), but what about some compromise like a new talent for every such sphere granting ranks in the associated skill like it is done with the Craftsman talent in the equipment sphere?

Yeah, you can.

Take the Selective Spell metamagic feat for example. However, it can't be taken before level 10 as it requires spellcraft 10 ranks and increases the spell level by one.

As I'm blessed with mostly normal groups, I don't have much to contribute to this thread but anyway, two stories of my player experiences (mostly dm'ing):

First one isn't even a special one. I know, railroading is frowned upon, but it's also bad taking it in the complete opposite. In one group, our DM started the introduction into his homebrew campaign world (4e) with 'I absolutely loathe railroading, so you won't get this from me'. Well, he REALLY avoided railroading. Our group was often three sessions long doing literally NOTHING (at least to advance the plot) because noone knew what to do. So we mostly roleplayed philosophical discussions between our characters (we were mostly clerics, paladins and such). It was really fun for us, but a little bit more 'railroading' had been appreciated.

The other one is something around a decade ago. We were playing The Dark Eye (which may be not all to known in the US). Our master did nearly everything you can do bad when dm'ing, but three scenarios are still vividly present in my memories.

- At the beginning (in a tavern), I'd tried to make some money with juggling. My character (kinda like a mix between thieve and non-magic bard) jumped on the table and made a juggling check. Our DM decided to give absolutely ridiculous penalties on my check (as I know from rl experience, juggling 3 balls without any complicated tricks is a cakewalk which should get NO penalties at all), I failed miserably and she decided one of my balls fell off the table, hit the fighter PC of my best friend on the foot AND did 1 point of damage to him! 1) how in the world could the ball fall from above the table on the feet exactly under the table? and 2) why does a small, soft 80-100 gramm ball inflict damage? Against an armored fighter above all?

- In this game, you have two actions per round, which you can use to attack or defend (i.e. you can attack once and defend once, or do one thing twice, or take other actions as casting spells or such). We were fighting against a bunch of orcs (with NPCs and such there were around a total of 30 participants in this battle, nearly even distributed). I attacked one of the orcs. He defended. The next member of our group attacked the same orc. He defended. By the rules, he would now be out of actions. Another participant attacked the same orc. He defended. We protested. Her (the DM) answer 'Since he used his two actions, he has already proceed to the next round, so he has a brand new set of new actions...' I then asked 'when he is already a round ahead of us, will he blink out of time for now and return in 3 seconds (the duration of a combat round in this game)?'
Later that same fight, one of the orcs attacked my character. This in and of itself wouldn't be bad. BUT: My character was on the western side of the battlefield, that orc were on the eastern side (with LITERALLY ALL ~28 other participants and something around 50 ft. between us) with absolutely NO ranged weapons (and no melee weapons suitable to throw).

- The infamous DMPC in his 'best' form (I totally have no problem with DMPCs, when made right, on the contrary, both me when I'm a DM and others when they are in our groups are even ASKED to play DMPCs, as they can greatly contribute to the game when played right) was played by her: A 'blind' (or at least 24/7 blindfolded) wizard named Merlin. Well, we could live with that. What wasn't all to entertaining was the fact that our second combat encounter (after this first encounter mentioned above) in the campaign happened as follows: 400-something orcs are charging our small party on an open field. Her wizard takes a few steps in front of us, lifts his blindfold and copies Cyclops from X-Men, a laser-like beam kills the whole army in one round. After that, Merlin reveals he's the son of - can't remember right - I think it was Rondra (the goddess of war from this setting). From this point onwards, in every encounter we just handwaved and said 'let Merlin do it, we'll watch'.

Sorry, this post get longer than planned, but I hope it was at least a bit entertaining.

Now that you've mentioned that, there ARE other types with spell point costs... ^^'

It's just that I looked at the Shock Blast first, realized it has a spell point cost, couldn't remember if this were the case in the original SoP, looked at the other electricity one Static Blast and at (most of) the others and didn't see any one with spell point costs.

Anyway, thanks for this fast answer and yeah, the dazing effect is convincing.

Why do the blast types changing the damage to electricity cost a spell point and any others don't?

Well, the group I played with in this campaign wasn't the planning type so good preparations weren't all to often...

And they always HAD their victory, if possible. Those pirates for example didn't steal their victory, they just came with their airship, picked them up and flew away. And only AFTER the group had accomplished to beat a part of the enemy group (and I got them REALLY flat-footed in this one, they didn't see it coming that the two NPCs they befriended would be part of this group and were preparing a trap for them there).

In my experience, there are good ways and bad ways to handle these things.

I once played in a the dark eye campaign where our gm let a NPC walk with us. We encountered a whole army just to see him obliterate them in a single round. From that point onward we only asked WHY should WE do ANYTHING? Her NPC can just do it for us.

On the other hand, in a 3.5 campaign I once gmed (from level 1 to 18, it should have gone all the way up to 60 but I lost my notes and some other things happened), I had nearly all scenarios mentioned here happen (deus ex machina, retreat, NPC involvement and so on), but my players enjoyed it all.

Example of deus ex machina: One member of the party were petrified by a basilisk when they were level 5 (basilisks were listed as CR5 so I just picked one as a random encounter). Then I noticed there's no way to cure petrification at level 5 and just let a friendly NPC coincidentally crossing their path heal him. Funny thing: This NPC was actually designed the way that he helped people in need voluntarily AND his actual order WAS to travel this area, initially it was just not planned to let him cross the party at that point.

Example of fleeing the battle: They learned to never challenge a rogue with a wand of greater invisibility before gaining some ways to actually SEE invisible... ^^

Example of NPC involvement: They once fought against a rival party which outnumbered them in level AND numbers and were rescued by the arriving gang of air pirates they befriended a few days earlier, but it involved a complex sidequest to actually GAIN the help of them.